The Broken by Tamar Cohen Page B

has to go out to work to fund everything? No, I think it’ll be a much less formal arrangement – when I’m not working I’ll have September 24/7, other times less. We’ll have to come to some sort of flexible agreement.’
    ‘Good luck with that.’
    Dan sighed deeply and rubbed a hand across his eyes. The whites were pinkish in the corners, which Josh had at first attributed to Dan being fresh from fifty lengths of the gym’s ozone-cleaned pool, but now he wondered if it might just be stress. Dan was putting up a good front, but it couldn’t be easy, breaking up a family. Josh wondered how much he was sleeping – with or without the added complication of a twenty-four-year-old model in his bed. The sudden mental image that accompanied this thought left him feeling momentarily hot with guilt.
    ‘Look, I know this initial bit is going to be difficult,’ said Dan, still rubbing his eyes. ‘Sasha’s furious and she has every right to be. I’ve been a fucking twat. But once she realizes it really is over and I’m not about to be a complete bastard about money and stuff, she’ll have to accept it, won’t she?’
    ‘Whatever you say.’

8
    ‘I want the house, full custody of our daughter, of course, and at least £50,000 a year.’
    ‘Um, I did ask for the bottom line of what you’d be prepared to accept, Mrs Fisher.’
    ‘That is the bottom line.’
    Sasha was dressed in full executive gear – fitted black jacket, black trousers and soft suede high-heeled black boots – and was clearly not about to be cowed either by the lawyer with her silk shirt and thick-framed Prada glasses, or by the plush wood-panelled office in High Holborn.
    ‘I can quite see why you’d be tempted to go for the jugular, Mrs Fisher, but in cases like this a certain degree of compromise is inevitable, and if you could just indicate in which areas you’re prepared to be flexible I—’
    ‘No compromises.’
    Hannah winced. This was what she’d been afraid of when Sasha asked her to accompany her to her first meeting with Caroline Briscoe, the highly recommended divorce lawyer whose hourly fee had made Hannah choke on her digestive biscuit when Sasha dropped it casually into the conversation over tea the day before.
    ‘Blimey, Sasha. Does she charge by the breath?’
    ‘What do I care? I won’t be paying for it.’
    Useless to point out that even if the money came from Dan, it was still part of the same pot she’d be relying on to live. Now Sasha was glaring at Caroline Briscoe with unblinking intensity and it was the hardened lawyer who looked away first.
    ‘Very well, Mrs Fisher. In that case you’re going to need to give me everything you have on your husband – every annoying thing he did, every argument, every grievance. Did he smack your daughter? Was he unreasonably possessive? Was he mean with money? Were you frightened of his moods?’
    Hannah couldn’t help exclaiming, ‘Dan’s not like that.’
    Instantly Sasha swung around, her face contorted with fury. ‘Shut up, Hannah. You know nothing about our life together. You don’t know what he was really like, when no one else was around. You don’t know how he treated me.’
    Hannah stared at her friend, her mouth still open to form the words she had been about to say. She knew Sasha was angry. She had the right to be angry. But surely she wasn’t going to start making stuff up about Dan? Anxiety prickled as another possibility occurred to her. Could there be a chance she wasn’t making it up? Might there be a side to Dan that she and Josh had never seen?
    ‘And will you be seeking the usual custody arrangement in cases like this? Every other weekend and one night during the week?’
    Caroline Briscoe had taken a black Moleskine notepad from the top drawer of her imposing desk and was jotting things down with an expensive-looking pen. Hannah noticed that her nails with their clear varnish were impeccably shaped, with perfect white crescents at the base, as